


rationale

by cighail



Category: Motorcity
Genre: DON'T WORRY NOBODY DIES, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Poor attempts at foreshadowing, The angst comes later, i try to be plot driven
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-02
Updated: 2017-11-02
Packaged: 2019-01-28 11:23:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12605508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cighail/pseuds/cighail
Summary: "Mike sits forward at the sound of his name, feels the sheer agony of metal shrapnel tearing through his muscle, and screams. "basically: kanebots get smarter, infiltrations into tech labs occur, major explosions and lasers, and lots and lots of love. oh and also pain, yeah, also pain.





	rationale

**Author's Note:**

> hey hey lads, first motorcity fanfic whee  
> i started and finished it last week, i've been cryign about it ever since, i'm rewatching it and shit like  
> what the fuk this is a disney XD show what are these emotions 
> 
> so yeah, hope u like, enjoy :)

He’s got a… thing going for his best friend.

It’s probably better phrased as crush but the word seems shallow, trivial and lasting only to a certain extent before love becomes like becomes _he’s kind of hot?_ and Mike isn’t that kind of person. The denotation itself feels kind of… harmful, if he thinks about it. It’s an unrequited feeling that pushes you down and messes you up, screws you over because the wrong people look your way; the wrong hands touch your shoulders; the wrong faces give you overeager smiles.

Still, he can’t think of any other word that fits (‘thing’ is pretty universal in itself), and the gentle throbbing in his chest when he thinks of blonde hair confirms all that he tries to deny. Being in love with Chuck doesn’t just hurt - it burns.

There’s fire running through his veins; a sort of power trip fuelled by restless screaming that keeps him going for hours at a time. He’ll never slow down, never stop, never run because he’ll never need to. So long as Chuck rides shotgun, cruises with Mike at his side and never, never stops talking, he’ll be fine.

He can take the pain.

* * *

_“Mike, bro, you gotta wake up. Mike. M-MIKE. MI—KE. MIKE.”_

Texas’s incessant yelling rouses him from his sleep like the nagging sore of a toothache, voice strangely nasal and stuttering. He raises his head past a familiar bobblehead, noticing its scorched side before he vaguely reinterprets his surroundings as ‘not-my-bed’.

Just past his burnt, brown bangs he spots the telling signs of a mission failed. Debris falls through the hood of Mutt, blood smeared across the dashboard and chunks of Kanebot metal scattered between the seats. A metal rod impales a quarter of his vision, thin but dark and red. He doesn’t need to look down to know where its coming from yet his hands reach down instinctively, swallowing as his fingertips trace the metal back to its origin. Just ahead of his car is the upturned 9 Lives - if he squints hard enough through watery eyes he can make out Julie, crawling away from the wreck.

His mind is fuzzy, sight tinted red and framed in flames, but he manages to spot frantic blues in his peripheral vision. Relief washes over him slowly- _Julie and Dutch and Texas and Chuck safe, safe, rest now sleep, now, sleep-_  
  
“Wake up wake up wake up please-” Someone touches him, their hand warm across his numb skin. He can’t raise his head to see but the voice quavers distinctly, and Chuck’s hands find their way beneath Mike’s arms to pull him up gently.  
“Mikey.” Chuck whispers, voice heavy in the shell of Mike’s ear. “Mikey, come on.”

Mike sits forward at the sound of his name, feels the sheer agony of metal shrapnel tearing through his muscle, and screams.

* * *

 

Texas and Dutch (who were thankfully out of harms way, for the most part) managed to relocate Mutt and 9 Lives after the Kanebots had set off an elaborately staged avalanche of debris. The Kanebots, met with Texas’s immeasurable firepower and war-like fury, were annihilated within seconds. In a way, the mission was a success.

But Kanebots didn’t work like this. In retrospect the ones sent down to Motorcity had never seen much change other than a slight tweak here and there to patch up glitches or improve laser-shooting performance. They were mindless A.I.s with a ‘shoot-to-kill’ purpose, the type of programming only competent scientists could put their minds to. Competent, not excellent.

This, however, as Chuck had so carefully put it, was ‘pretty damn smart’: smoothly executed actions with a true goal and not the looped sequence of messily strung actions Mike and his team had become so familiar with. The Kanebots had put them in a completely disadvantageous position and it wasn’t even a matter of being outnumbered: They dodged well, learned as they fought, movements seemingly improvised by the surroundings they sensed.

All in all, pretty scary stuff.

“Alright,” Mike purses his lips as he dangles his legs over the tabletop he’s sitting on. “That didn’t go as well as we planned.”“Understatement.” Chuck butts in, arms folded as he leans against a counter. “That went to total shit.”Dutch turns to them, exasperated. “There’s something goin’ on with the the Kanebots. This isn’t laser tech anymore- we’re talking about an increase in speed, tactic and power overnight. We fought the very same Kanebots yesterday without breaking a sweat.”

“Texas would’ve taken care of it if it weren’t for this broken punch stick.” Texas unhelpfully supplies, lifting up his cast before immediately regretting the slow wave of pain that rolled across his shoulder.

“None of the info I gathered from my last trip to Deluxe mentioned this.” Julie looks down in disbelief and Mike spots a hint of shame through the twinge in her voice. “I’m going back. I’ll fix this, I swear I’ll find something-”

“Jules.” Mike lays a hand on her shoulder reassuringly and she breathes out shakily, anxious eyes fluttering half-shut. “Sleep on it.”

“Sleep on it?” Her voice is almost outraged, head swivelled towards him as she snaps bitterly, “we almost got killed out there!” But Dutch has his back on this one- Dutch, shaken visibly by the aftermath of this mission, hands interlaced in his lap as he nods.

“Going out there again is just going to make it worse, Jules. Your car is completely wrecked and I’m going to have to rework Mutt’s chassis. If we sleep on it now our heads’ll be clear in the morning.”

Mike nods. “We can’t fight like this - not while we’re three men down. Just- get some rest. We’ll discuss this in the morning.”

The Burners disperse begrudgingly, uncertainties still hovering in their heads but stored away for the next day, and Mike stretches his arms, pushing the boundaries of how much pain he can withstand. He traces a thin, blood crusted welt across his forearm and winces as the skin beneath his fingertips sting. He’ll add this to his collection of scars: this one’s just about as on par as the smooth strip of white skin below his hip.

“Sleeping yet?” Chuck’s voice breaks into his thoughts, his hands into his vision, as his friend gives him an affable nudge on the shoulder.

“Definitely.” Mike sighs. He cards a hand through his hair- the one that doesn’t hurt, thank god it’s his right - and breathes out a sigh of relief. “You?”Chuck laughs and Mike recognises this one - it’s a laugh filled with nervousness, anxiety, and just a smidgeon of fatigue, reserved for the worst of days. “Maybe. I mean, yeah, but not before I figure out why those shields were a fraction of a second slower than what I calculated. Taking into account air resistance, size and whatnot, it should’ve been. Good enough. But it wasn’t, obviously, I bet it’s one of the-”

“Chuck. Go to bed.”   
He hears the blonde sigh, look him in the eyes through overgrown bangs, and nod. “Just for you.”

_Liar._

Mike spots him slink into the garage later that night with a snack in hand, eyes wary of his surroundings. A familiar green glow reflects dully off the metal scrap resting against the wall of their yard; a dim, flickering sheen conveys the rapid finger movements Mike knows only Chuck is capable of.

There’s the steady tapping of fingers against a holographic keyboard, a distinct muttering kept low for the rest of the Burners, an excruciatingly slow crunch of crisps as Chuck gives into his speedy metabolism. Mike closes his eyes, leant against the wall that keeps him concealed, drinking in the sound of silence and the lazy Chuck-hums that accent a gentle, whistling breeze.

He sleeps.

* * *

 

The next few weeks are hectic.

First off, everybody’s down. Mentally and physically worn from every outside exertion- between fighting for Motorcity to running errands to making special parts for cash, daily life becomes a chore and temporary disabilities become the frustrating factors that pinpoint every bout of melancholy. Texas nearly tears off both his arms by trying to race with only one and the Burners barely manage to get him out of another fight they know he can’t win- not in this state.

“I’m fine!” Texas grunts, swinging his cast around. Dutch cringes at the sound of a crack, grabbing his shoulders firmly and sitting him down.

“Dude, you are not fine. Anymore physical activity and your wound won’t ever heal. You know that, right?”“Yeah?” Texas snorts. “Well Texas is getting tired. Bored as all hell, ready for war. I need to PUNCH something, WA-TCHA KAPOW CHOW! … You feel?”

“Nobody feels.” Chuck grunts.

“Ditto on this one, buddy.” Mike shrugs. “We’re lucky the Kanebots have stopped attacking for a while. Must’ve been their scientific leap forward. If we lay low and they keep quiet for a couple more days, we’ll be back in fighting spirit in no time.”

But, secondly, Mike's hope for at least /some/ tranquility is met with a flurry of imminent destruction. Julie rockets back from Deluxe, panting with every breath figures and variants and code names for secret projects that take the recovering spirit of the Burners and stomps on it— thrice.

Mike strings together a somewhat insistent call for help (desperate times call for desperate measures, after all) that catches wind in the Mama’s Boys territory, and the gang is quick to show their disgust.

“Chilton needs _our_ help?” Junior lets out a pre-pubescent guffaw as his fellow teammates chuckle their responses. “As if we’d lend hands to our arch-nemesis.”  
“This ain’t about rivalries, Junior.” Dutch pinches the bridge of his nose in exasperation. “Motorcity needs its guardians.” Still Junior brushes him off like he’s insignificant, another brick in the wall. “How’s it feel, Chilton?” His face is unpleasantly close to Mike’s nose, breath stinking something awful. “How’s it feel, being the _loser_?”

“I played it fair.” He merely shrugs. “But this isn’t a game. Do us a favour and we’ll return it.”

He never wavers in his voice, still casual in his mannerisms as he replies the scrawny leader, yet there’s a hard glint in his eyes that speaks more intimidation than any gesture. Junior pauses, furrowed eyebrows slackening as he backs off. He considers for a while and Mike holds his breath, uncharacteristically nervous, before nodding curtly. Mike holds in his sigh of relief.

“Chilton owes us.” Junior gloats afterwards. “That’s never sounded better, coming from me.”

Thankfully the rest of the gangs in Motorcity aren’t so much of a hassle to negotiate with, so long as they’re given their special parts and custom models. Dutch and Chuck are unenthusiastic in their responses once Mike gives them news, knowing that they’ll suffer the brunt of the work, but it’s for a cause. The greatest one.

* * *

 

The next batch of Kanebots are a weaker troop, older models, and Mike can’t even begin to describe his relief when Foxy draws back her hair and her eyelashes flutter in the way that they would when she zips past a finish line unscathed.

“Easy.” She says. “I’m unimpressed.”“You’re supposed to be.” Mike grins. If the Kanebots have reverted back to ‘morning-exercise’ difficulty then the Burners will be up and running in no time.

Except…

“Nope.” Dutch shakes his head, “No can do.” as he yanks out a part of Mutt’s wheel and a bolt springs loose. From what Mike knows about cars that seems kind of unsafe but then again, his knowledge is unfortunately lacking. Dutch raises his blowtorch at his face, unlit, the frantic pitch in his voice suggesting that his index isn’t far from the trigger.

“Dude, we’ve got too many commissions for parts; it’ll take us ages to finish them off. Julie’s zooming back and forth from Deluxe to get us Kane components and it’s exhausting her. Hell, Chuck hasn’t seen the light of day for a week.”

“Chuck?” Mike frowns. “You’d think he’d ditch work for Antonio’s.”

“Nah, they do deliveries now.” Dutch grunts, just in time for the trundling noise of a braking motorbike park itself outside of the Burner’s garage.

“PEPPERONI PIZZA EXTRA CHEESE EXTRA TOPPINGS.” A petite red-head screeches under her helmet. “FOR ONE CHUCK.”

Mike wrinkles his nose. “Yeah, that won’t do.”

 

He expects a nightmare in Chuck’s room — the kind of nightmare involving unhygienic placements of pizza boxes, oil smudges on desks, and the occasional mystery stain. Yet the plain cleanliness of it all pleasantly surprises him and he bites back a guilty sound, stepping into the room as quietly as possible.

“Hey Mike.” Chuck’s in the far left where his desk is, back turned to him as a series of semi-transparent code hovers above a pizza box.

“Am I that obvious?” he laughs.

“Nope.” A blonde head swivels in his direction. He shoots Mike a crooked, almost sheepish, grin and the room gets just that little bit brighter. “Based on how busy everyone else is, I kind of expected you to be my only visitor today.”

Mike’s slightly offended- he _was_ busy, well sort of, _checking on other gangs is business…right?_  But brushes it off with a quip.

“Texas is probably free.”

“Texas is Texas.” Chuck snorts. “Let’s be real here, he’d probably zone out without even having to step into my room.”

“True.” Mike replies. “Oh hey-” the heat seeping into the palms of his hands reminds Mike of the box he’s holding. He strides up to Chuck before the pads of his fingers can begin to sting and sets it down on the table.

“Got you this. Sort of.” Mike’s hands twist away from the box. “You ordered pizza?”“Extra cheese, extra toppings.” Chuck nods. “Metabolism never sleeps.”

It isn’t until Chuck wolfs down the first slice that Mike realises that he has no idea what to say to him. Chuck looks- busy, kind of dazed, and from this angle Mike sees through his blonde bangs and spies the betraying sign of fatigue drawn thickly under his eyes. They glitter with a sort of admirable determination even when half-lidded, dark irises flickering back and forth through codes as he hums an unfamiliar melody. For a minute Chuck pauses, fingers tapping the surface of his desk impatiently as he runs through a program in his head, bites his lips as an error code blinks red on the screen in front of him. He makes a noise - soft, blowing a strand of unruly hair from his lips, and Mike catches himself reaching out to brush those hairs away. He digs his fingers under the heel of his palm, tucks them firmly against his resting head; watches.

Chuck cautiously punches a string of… something (Mike asked him about it once and through an excited ramble could only catch the word ‘variable’, which sounded kind of math-y and boring so he had kept that to himself) into his holographic keypad, and a message box pops up.

_/Confirm deletion of _ex.var Shield1_?/_

After a few minutes of contemplation Chuck sucks in a quiet breath and taps the ‘confirm’ button; a paragraph of red text flickers green and the screen bounces jubilantly. He makes a barely audible ‘aha’ and weaves his hands through his hair the way one would pat themselves on the back.

“Sorry about that.” he whistles, suddenly reaffirming Mike’s existence as he turns to face him. “Just trying to reboot the shield program and find the problem. Well it’s a little more complicated than that, but-”

“No, no no.” Mike shakes his head and finds himself at a loss for words. “Uh, I got it.”

“Yeah?” Chuck smiles. 

“Mhm.” He swallows. Chuck frowns now, curious expression settled on his lips.

“Oh, uh... Were you going to say something?”

Yeah, he was. Mike stands, disoriented by the way the walls close in on him and Chuck fills his frame of vision. He tries to concentrate on something other than Chuck’s wandering hand which, at the moment, blindly searches for the last pizza slice in the box. Unfortunately for him, nothing else seems distracting enough.

“Go out with me and Mutt. We could use some fresh air, take a break.” Chuck certainly looks like he needs it, and he wouldn’t refuse a ride with Mike, would he?

“I dunno, bro. We’ve got a lot of custom parts to do-” and he shoots Mike a look- “thanks to you, by the way,-” before tossing a finished pizza box neatly into a squat trashcan, “-so I can’t afford to take a break right now.”

“That’s not true!” Mike blurts - he isn’t even sure _why_ , why there’s a frantic tone to his voice that he rarely hears in himself - and Chuck is almost taken aback by his outburst before suspicion flickers across his mind and he folds his arms.

“Bro, if this is about taking the Blastosaurous out on a test run, we’ve literally _just_  rebuilt-”

“Movie.”

Chuck blinks. “Huh?”

* * *

 

In all honesty, Mike kind of hates movies: he’s not the one _moving_ , first of all, not the one leading the scene and flowing with people and things coming at him in all directions. He isn’t the one dodging explosives, driving cars or handling ticking time-bombs either. Actors do all that, and acting in itself - rehearsal after rehearsal after rehearsal - must get pretty frustrating. There’s no flipped-switch game changer or Deus Ex Machine in real life; no rising and falling action that arcs a storyline perfectly before swooping towards a grand finale. There’s only the hard edge of battle, swinging and slashing again and again until your muscles scream fire and your legs give out and your eyes burn with an incredible pain. Mike relishes those sores, the scars of war and the slip ups that come with dangerous improvisation. It’s a certain confirmation to his human existence, reassurance that _you_ control the blood running through your veins.

_But,_  (and Mike grabs another handful of popcorn from between Chuck’s gangly legs) _This is kinda alright._

“Okay, wait-” Chuck whispers into the shell of his ear. “There’s no way she’d have known that Kathi was an android. She looks totally human. Check out the way her pupils dilate and her chest rises when Sab is on screen.”

“Why’s she doing that?” Mike wrinkles his nose, voice muddled through a mouthful of popcorn.

“Dude.” Chuck nearly punches him. “She likes her.”

“Oh.” Mike’s forgotten. “Oh right yeah.”

It takes an explosive, near-impossible car scene to keep Mike’s eyes on the screen and every so often Chuck forgets that Mike is beside him and leans into his jacket. He’s used to it now, the intimacy between them, but sometimes if he really puts his mind to the way the blonde’s hands push and pull at the hem of Mike’s jacket between his fingertips he reaches a calming, heightened awareness of that touch he didn’t know could happen.

Then Chuck’s grip twists into an uncomfortable pull as he mumbles incoherently, motioning to the screen, and Mike resumes watching.

 

_“I love you, Sab.” Kathi sobs into the comm, two-thousand feet above ground. A space-orc drives its tusk into her abdomen, and [CENSORED] [CENSORED] [CENSORED FOR YOUR VIEWING PLEASURE] until she collapses, writhing on the floor in pain. Even as her hands tremble a monumental strength brings her to her feet as she grips the edge of the comms table and grits her teeth. Her galaxy shoes find firm footing in ground as she turns, drives the heel of her boot into the space-orc’s jaw and knocks him into the floor, whipping out her pistol and [CENSORED] [CENSORED] [CENSORED FOR YOUR VIEWING PLEASURE]. The orc gasps, [CENSORED] pooling from his open wounds, screaming her name._

_“You are pathetic.” He wheezes through a bloody mouth bored with bullet holes. “An inefficient, untrustworthy, broken program.”_

_“I used to think that.” Kathi’s voice is strained, eyes flickering to the gaping wound in her stomach, brows furrowed in concentration as she refuses to shut down. Messages blink across her arms, her chest, ‘URGENT REPAIR URGENT REPAIR’ and she stumbles, feeling faint behind her eyes._

_“I used to think that.” She repeats, and then she remembers._

_Sab is even more beautiful in her memory. Her words are soft, hands interwoven in Kathi’s hair as the android takes in the smell of flowers, sea salt and grass._

_“Can I fall in love with you?” Sab murmurs. “Would you let me?”_

 

_“Yes.”_

 

_Kathi’s heart beats with a strange perseverance: stubbornly in love and stubbornly alive, until eventually, like all things born and made, it stops._

* * *

 

Hard and heavy lights blink into a brightening movie theatre- credits scroll across the dusty screen as the cinema’s mess, once shrouded in darkness, is revealed.

“Bro.” Chuck says, eyes glued to the screen even after the movie is over. “That was so fucking sad.”

Mike nods. “Yeah. I gotta admit it teared me up too.”

Exiting the theatre, Chuck pauses midway down squat stairs as he adds as an afterthought, “I wish they managed to remove all the censored parts though.” _  
_

The cinema’s a ways away from the Burner’s HQ and both boys run out things to talk about before they get home. Chuck goes on about the crazy good effects of Kathi’s android appearance, the cityscape and it’s interesting cyberpunk take on what could’ve been futuristic Las Vegas and Mike keys in on the sleek car designs because well _hey, Chuck, if you’re allowed to talk about what you like then so am I!_

“You’re such a car fanatic.” Chuck grumbles.

“Aren’t we all?” Mike reminds with a smirk.

He doesn’t often reflect upon movies that often - and to be honest this one wasn’t a cinematic masterpiece worthy of encore - but something about Kathi’s death is engrained into his memory. Her heroism, her struggle for life and the way her eyes flashed with determined integrity, how she died for a better cause, immortally alive in the memories of the people she saved. He wishes he was like that too- wishes he was more than a rebel with a good cause; wishes for a fight that leaves him breathless; blood that spurs his beating heart on until it screams for survival or when something raw, something primitive takes over his body and he descends into pure, primeval instinct _._

Soft snoring interrupts his escalating train of thought as Mike looks over his shoulder. Chuck is curled up against the window, hands clumsily interwoven - almost like he didn’t know where to put them - and feet tucked up into the seat. Mike would reprimand him for that but Chuck looks like he needs this sleep, so instead he brushes those blonde bangs out of his eyes and hopes that Chuck doesn't wake up. _  
_

They pull up at the Burner’s garage, dimly lit by flickering neon signs. Just over at the bar seats Mike can see the remnants of Texas and Dutch’s game of Laser Swords III: chip bags and table dents are the telling signs of a sore loser- which could, debatably, be either of them.

“Chuckles?” Mike whispers, leaning over to see if Mutt’s abrupt stop has wakened his friend. Chuck remains asleep- deeply too, face buried in his hands and breathing against the window. His chest trembles with every breath, peacefully serene, and Mike can’t help but observe him in all his vulnerability. He thinks about the movie again, about Kathi. He briefly remembers, some 4-5 years ago, learning that the body responds in the same way to fear that it does with love- pupils dilating, chest rising and falling sharply, mind racing with thoughts. He briefly remembers trying to debunk it with an embarrassed best friend.

Mike takes Chuck’s hand in his and lets himself drift away.


End file.
